CodingSanity made a comparison between XP and Vista based on the following criteria,

Look & feel

Performance

Device support

Reliability

Gaming, and

Multimedia

In performance, codingsanity said, “Well, here there appears to be no contest. Windows XP is both faster and far more responsive.”

“In addition, numerous tasks that take a long time on Vista have been greatly speeded up. File copies are snappy and responsive, and pressing the Cancel button halfway through actually cancels the copy almost immediately…”